The Virtual Grand National 2018

30 Apr The Virtual Grand National 2018

For the 2nd year running Bird was asked to deliver a PR & Social Media campaign to create exposure for the TV broadcast of The Virtual Grand National 2018 on ITV 4 on the eve of famous Grand National race at Aintree.

The VR concept was created by Carm Productions in association with Inspired Entertainment.

Created using the latest 3D CGI technology and sophisticated software, the virtual race contained the same 40 runners and riders.

In 2017, the first-ever Virtual Grand National was won by Cause of Causes, which placed second in the race itself. The computer predicted three of the top six finishers.

Bird was tasked with increasing the awareness of The Virtual Grand National even more so on the previous year’s success.

With only a short period of time to work with, it was crucial to create as much exposure as fast as possible.

To start the campaign off, we created targeted adverts across Facebook to promote the trailer and also the main press release for The Virtual Grand National 2018. Bird created the exact persona of a typical horse racing fan, and then served them a tailored advert.

The adverts were very well received by the target audience with a magnitude of comments from people showing their support and excitement for the show. The adverts resulted in over 1,500 website clicks with the targeted video reaching approx 150,000 people.

Alongside the paid advertising, we also created numerous organic posts on both Facebook and Twitter to build anticipation toward the airing on ITV4.

Overall, the activity reached over 950,000 people via social media.

To reach this amount of people in such a short period of time really shows the power of social media in today’s methods of communicating with an audience.

If you’d like to speak to Bird about your social media strategy please email our Head of Social Danny Moore, dm@birdconsultancy.co.uk